The Low-Trust Society and Hard-Earned Expat Insights

I recently stumbled upon a true gem of an X post from @kunley_drukpa — not necessarily a ringing endorsement of expat life in India, but an expert treatise on the “low trust society” that rings all too true for anyone with experience in the Third World.

A small excerpt:

“A few years ago now I spent some time in India. One of the more lasting impressions I have from that period was the degree to which the low trust environment there (of a kind) wore me down mentally and transformed my attitude towards public spaces from a by disposition fairly ‘high trust’ person to being much more cynical and constantly on guard - ie being ‘low trust’. Over the space of the first month or so, because of the environment, experiencing real psychogenic anguish at the mental transition from being basically well meaning and otherwise liberal to irritable, combative and developing (experience-informed) prejudices*.”

*Consider the deeply-inculcated, uniquely Western guilt at coming to terms with reality even when it’s undeniable, right in front of your face.

Excerpt II:

“Let me give you some examples of the kinds of behaviours you would encounter in India and then explain how prolonged exposure to those behaviours changes you. Granted you are a ‘Mleccha’, a ‘Gora’, (Foreigner, White Man) so qualifier you are treated differently but you still encounter these attitudes appreciably more than you would in many other countries. They do not of course represent the attitude of every Indian (I am an amateur Indologist I love India don’t @ me) but it evidences a certain ‘dog eat dog’ ‘tragedy of the commons’ mindset on the part of a part of the population that results in very appreciable low society wide social trust, at least over certain behaviours. (Others may be more policed eg social roles.) (Incidentally I think this mentality is one of the principal causes for many of India’s systemic problems but that is a separate topic.)

• Take a tuk-tuk or taxi. Driver pretends his meter is broken, quotes price ten times more than actual price. Doesn’t have any change, doesn’t have a card machine. Starts arguing with you when you say you are not giving them more money they should have the change. Sometimes will plead for large tip even if you pay them more than the actual price too. To combat this you have to be prepared to argue with the driver every time you take a taxi (start ‘fights’) and bring small change with you everywhere**

• Taking the Mumbai Metro with a woman (naively), metro is incredibly crowded. Man uses crowd as an excuse to press himself up against the woman, starts masturbating. Woman screams, starts to have panic attack - but crowd doesn’t really react. She runs out crying at next metro stop

• Walking around on streets - lots of beggars approach you, often old women, young children, people with some kind of disfigurement, hijra etc. Sometimes they aggressively grab your wrist, your clothes, tug at your shirt and refuse to let go. Often will follow you for a while even if you tell them to go away”

**The Thai version of the tuk-tuk scam is exactly the same as this gentlemen’s experience in India, but with an extra twist that I detail in my gold-standard expat memoir, Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, the relevant excerpt of which you can find via the link below.

Related: Samsung and I Paint the Town Red: The Tuk-Tuk Hustle

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Excerpt III:

“I assume if you spend long enough in this kind of environment it ‘does a number’ on you mentally. You become permanently wired to expect people to exhibit low trust ‘third worldist’ behaviours towards you and often you in turn exhibit it towards others. Not even necessarily out of malice, just because you have to act similarly to not in turn be exploited yourself. Countries that have a reputation for being ‘scammers’ will often by disposition be like that because of the low trust environment in their country, those attitudes emerge out of it.

It has been said that high trust environments are quite rare historically. For a high trust environment to transition to a low trust environment all it often requires is for a relatively small group of people to begin behaving in a low trust manner*** and then for their low trust behaviour to not be policed. Eventually the rest of the society must mentally adapt to that low trust behaviour - ie become itself low trust - in order to not become victims of it.”

***See: Broken Windows Policing

In a conversation with the excellent Substack publication Collapse Life, I was introduced to the concept of Third World-ification of the First World — in other words, the transformation from a high-trust to a low-trust culture.

Rappers in the United States, for instance, promote basically the analog of the Third World low-trust society: everybody is out to get you so you have to get them first, you can’t trust anyone except your gun, etc.

“Only thing I’m ever gonna trust is my AK47 bro.”
-Stitches

The big caveat to the ‘low trust society’ rule

I haven’t ever been to India, but this caveat holds true throughout East Asia: the tourist spots are the worst for anti-social, low-trust behavior. In the less-traveled regions, honesty and decency are much more common.

Also, all things considered, it’s not all slings and arrows; there is significant upside to living in the Third World.

Just pack a healthy arsenal of skepticism.

Rose-colored glasses kill expats every day.

See: Critical Insights: What Makes Thai Prostitutes Superbly Talented

Benjamin Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile (now available in paperback), is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

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